This application claims the priority of European application 98 115 962.7, filed in the European patent Office on Aug. 25, 1998, the disclosure of which is expressly incorporated by reference herein.
The present invention relates to a gear pump having two mutually meshing gears which are each assigned to a shaft and which are each driven by means of a driving unit, the driving units each being drivable by a control unit such that the shafts rotate at a definable rotational velocity.
Normally, gear pumps are driven by a single shaft which extends out of the pump casing. In cases with very high torques or when the flow medium is charged with fillers, two-shaft arrangements are occasionally also used in order to protect the tooth surfaces from wear or excess strain.
Known multishaft drives include timing gears which ensure that the tooth surfaces do not come in contact with one another. In the case of the known multishaft drives, a single driving unit is used, the force distribution onto the individual shafts taking place by means of the engaging gears by way of the above-mentioned timing gear.
Furthermore, a teaching is known from German Patent Document DE-32 30 550C2 in which a two-shaft drive is described which has two driving units. In this case, direct-current motors are used with a control unit which is based on current measurements in the exciting circuit of both driving units and on a rotational velocity measurement in the case of one driving unit. In this known teaching, a desired rotational velocity and a desired power ratio can be defined.
The last-mentioned driving concept has the disadvantage that, as the result of the rotational velocity monitoring taking place only on one side, in the event of a clutch, transmission or pump gearing damage, the line in which the rotational velocity is not monitored may cause consequent damage by endeavoring to reach the desired power. Furthermore, the power ratio can be adjusted only in a narrow range of from 0.5 to 1. Finally, this system is not suitable for appropriately detecting and taking into account torque pulsations because of the intervention point shifting on the intervention line, because of minimal gearing inaccuracies or differences in the rigidities of the engine mounting and transmission mounting.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a gear pump which does not have the above-mentioned disadvantages.
This object is achieved by providing a gear pump of the above noted type, wherein the control units are operably connected by way of a data line. Further advantageous features of preferred embodiments of the present invention are described below and in the claims.
Preferred embodiments of the invention have the following advantages. In that a completely symmetrical structure for the control units for controlling the driving units is provided and, in addition, a fast data transmission is provided between the two control devices contained in the control units, it is achieved that, despite possible torque pulses on the shafts, the tooth surfaces will neither lift off, nor can an excess torque which is too high be transmitted by way of the tooth surfaces.
Other objects, advantages and novel features of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description of the invention when considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.